A blooming good blog!

December 28, 2009

As of the end of this week, Writers Plot is disbanding. It was a shared decision: we've moved in different directions with our writing careers, and this blog format just wasn't working for everyone any more.

When we began WP, the blogosphere was a lot younger, and we've watched as it has grown and prospered. It's been terrific to get to know so many fellow blog-writers and share stories and skills with them.

I know writing a weekly blog has helped me learn to write short (always a struggle, since I tend to fall in love with my words) and to the point. Sometimes it felt like writing an editorial, when I had a point I wanted to make; sometimes it was more like writing an entry in a diary, as I and my blogbuddies talked about personal experiences, past and present. I've written one hundred and thirty seven posts since March 2007–I had to go back and count.

It has also been a joy working with Writers Plot's diverse and talented authors. We've expressed different viewpoints and styles, but always with an underlying honesty. We've tried to entertain and communicate at the same time, and I hope we've been successful.

But don't worry–I'm not going to disappear. With three books to write in 2010, and three other books to promote, and conferences across the country, and helping to manage New England Crime Bake, I'll be very, very busy.

Thank you all for stopping by Writers Plot over the past three years, and for sharing your comments with us.

December 21, 2009

I had to go out and buy new Christmas tree lights this week. That shouldn't be a big deal, but it really brought home to me how much lights have changed since I first became aware of them.

I have pictures of every tree my family had, starting in 1950 (left). I won't bore you with them all (unless you really, really want me to), but they are surprisingly consistent. We always had real trees, and we always decorated them the same way. We resisted (and continue to) artificial trees, including those trees pre-wired with all the lights. We resisted "theme" trees in single colors, especially pink. I'll admit we did for a time use tinsel (that strand-by-strand kind), but eventually abandoned it.

Our tree-decorating was a tradition, and each year we would gather as a family, pulling each ornament out of the boxes (some of which are as old as I am), commenting on when and where we got them. My mother would sit back and supervise, dictating where each one should go, and how to balance the color distribution for the lights. It's a tradition I've tried to uphold ever since I officially left home, starting with the tree I had in my first apartment in Cambridge (right in the nice bay window in the front, facing Harvard Street), and the memorable tree in a later apartment for which my roommates and I enlisted the help of friends and neighbors at a party–which may explain why there were plastic molars (yes, teeth, from the orthodontist who lived upstairs) and carefully strung potato chips on that one.

But I was going to talk about lights. My parents had twinkle lights long before they were common–the string even had its own transformer, and the bulbs were hard to find, but at least they lasted. Then they invented lights that twinkled without help, although they give out pretty quickly. More than a decade ago I found a string of "programmable" lights that did all sorts of things. This year I plugged them in and they refused to do half of their tricks, and I didn't like the ones that were left. I've found an all-white one that is close but not quite the same. A couple of years ago I found a fabulous short string of lights that actually changed colors! I love those, but I can't find any more of them, and I've already broken one of the fragile bulbs. So I was left with one string of standard bulbs that I bought in 1972, which looks just like the string of standard bulbs my parents bought in 1950.

Obviously it was time to go shopping. I was surprised to find that there were pretty much only two choices: those (@#$%&*) little white/colored things (I have plenty of those, and I don't like them) and the more recent LED lights. I don't want to think of myself as a Luddite, so I bought a few strings, round and pointy (does that pointy form have a name? Does it think it's a pine cone? A flame?). And I'm going to grit my teeth and give them a try this year.

I could go on and on about the ornaments. I was even going to give you a forensic analysis, zooming in on the pictures of the trees from the 1950s and demonstrating that, yes, I'm still using some of the same ornaments; a few have survived and are now semi-antiques–as am I, I guess. Of course new ones have been added over the years, so many that there's no longer room for all of them on one tree. My sister and I usually give each other at least one new ornament each year, which keeps increasing the collection. And this year we have two kittens who have no idea what a treat they're in for (we introduced Dexter to snow today, and he's quite confused), so I'm guessing we'll be using the indestructible wooden and plastic ones this year, rather than the heirloom ornaments.

But I'm hoping I can get my (small) family to join in the decorating, and to remember the happy times of Christmases past. There's something magic about a twinkling, glowing tree covered with memories, isn't there?

December 14, 2009

A friend who's fond of internet humor and likes to share it recently sent me a list that was making the rounds, a compilation of random thoughts. One line struck me immediately: "I wish there was a font for sarcasm."

As it happens, the members of Writers Plot have been discussing humor, and what role it should play in our blog. The discussion went something like this.

"We should write funny stuff," one said. "Readers like funny.""I thought I was," I said.

Apparently not.

I never claimed to write funny-ha-ha. I thought I was writing with dry humor. Hey, I once had an agent praise my submission for its "sly wit"–I have it in writing!. And if that isn't working, then I'm up a creek, because I can't write any funnier.

Writing funny is hard. I don't think it can be forced–you either have a comic voice or you don't. But what I lean toward is sarcasm, which is kind of a double-edged sword. To those who "get" it, it can be funny. To those who don't, often they're either confused or annoyed, like they're missing the joke.

I've used sarcasm most of my life. For most people, myself included, it's probably a defensive mechanism–you say something cutting mainly to conceal your real feelings. Talk about a movie you've seen, and you say, "well, that was a waste of twelve bucks" rather than "I didn't like it." Stating a simple, personal opinion leaves you open to criticism, and a lot of us (particularly insecure writers) will go a long way to avoid that.

But at the same time, a sarcastic snappy comment can often be hurtful, even if unintentionally. People think you're mocking them or putting them down.

It's interesting that so much humor relies on a streak of cruelty. Take slapstick–why do people enjoy watching someone slip on a banana peel? There is pain involved, right? Someone can get hurt, and the joke relies on the fall, not on whether the person gets up and walks away unscathed. Someone is made to look stupid and clumsy–and that someone is not us.

Is that the key? Deflection? We (or at least some of us) like to see someone else make a fool of him or herself, while we sit smugly on the sidelines. Sort of a "there but for fortune" moment–better him than me.

I write cozies, and I read a lot of them. I'll admit I enjoy the "snarky" ones–but in most of them, the humor is self-directed toward the protagonist. It's often the heroine's internal voice saying something like, "smart move, idiot–now you have to explain why your fingerprints are all over the victim's jewelry." She doesn't necessarily inflict it on anyone else.

So far I've written three heroines. The first, Em Dowell of the Glassblowing Series, has a sharp tongue, at least when it's in her own head–and she's hiding a soft heart. The second, Meg Corey of the Orchard Series, is relatively humorless. Guess what? Meg's more popular among readers, if sales are any indication. Why? My hunch is that she's more vulnerable, which makes her someone that readers can identify with.

Now I'm writing a new heroine: Nell Pratt, Philadelphia fundraiser. And I'm hoping she falls somewhere between Em and Meg. She definitely has a sense of humor, but she's more open with other people; she likes them, and they like her. she doesn't get off a lot of zingy one-liners, but neither does she insult people.

But sometimes it would be nice to have that sarcasm font, or maybe a little code that signals a tone of voice. Lines can be read more than one way, with different inflections and emphasis. How can you tell if the words are meant to be sarcastic if you can't "hear" them?

How about you? What do you think is funny? And does that include sarcasm?

December 07, 2009

That's one of the first rules you learn in writing. Write about something you're familiar with, so you can give your story authentic flavor, color, texture. There's one major exception: most mystery writers haven't killed anyone. I've met a lot of mystery writers, and they're all really very nice. But I do know that many of us have done such odd things as visit morgues and prisons, and even taken shooting courses, in order to get our details right. We also post all sorts of gruesome questions on various loops as we look for accurate information: "What would a body look like after being submerged in a swamp for a week?" "How far does blood spatter?"

I'll admit that Sarah and I had never seen the Southwest when we started writing the Glassblowing Series. When I did travel there, I was blown away by Tucson and the surrounding area. It was so unfamiliar, so unlike anything I had ever encountered growing up on the East Coast or in California (where I lived for ten years). In a way the setting became a character in its own right–the dryness of the air, the ubiquitous cacti, the mountains always on the edge of your vision. My protagonist Em Dowell was herself a transplant from Back East, so she was always aware of her surroundings.

The Orchard Series, on the other hand, was born from my chance encounter with a house built by an ancestor of mine. I've always joked that it was all those dead relatives in the town that kept calling me back, but I fell in love with the place and ended up using it in a book, and then a series of books, because I wanted to have a reason to keep going back. Once again my protagonist Meg Corey is an outsider, a city girl, so she starts out by feeling completely out of place in the small rural town–and finding a body in her back yard doesn't help! But over the course of the series she comes to appreciate small-town values, and she's making friends and finding her own niche there.

Like Meg, I'm learning as I go–and now I've picked a lot of apples, and planted organic lettuce, and walked through boggy fields, and toured farmers markets and cider mills. And talked to farmers and orchardists about the economic and practical realities of small farms in this day and age.

Next fall I'll be launching a new series, which is about as diametrically opposed to the Orchard Series as you can get (except for the intelligent and determined protagonist in each who will keep on solving murders). It "stars" the City of Philadelphia, and my heroine is an insider, someone who has lived and worked in the area for many years. She's involved in the cultural community, so you lucky readers are going to get all sorts of glimpses into what really goes on behind the scenes in museums and historic institutions.

This time I can say that I have lived in the Philadelphia area and I worked there for over a decade, and yes, that included stints in two museums. I also worked for the City itself, so I know something about how the city works. As a result, I know the sights and the sounds and the smells of the place–the bustle of the underground corridors between train stations, the wonderful vistas where you catch glimpses of the opulent City Hall, the quiet corners of history like Ben Franklin's burial site. I hope to use all of these to make the books in the new series come alive.

But I have a favor to ask of you. So far my editor and I have been calling this "Book 1" of the "Museum Mystery Series." Marketing hasn't chimed in yet with names. So tell me: what's the first thing you think about when you think Philadelphia? What terms will immediately clue you in that a book is about not only the city, but also about its history and its cultural community? All suggestions welcome, including title ideas. (So far the only strong contender we've come up with is "For Whom the Bell Cracks.)

November 30, 2009

For the last few weeks I have been in intense edit mode for a book that's due (electronically, thank goodness) on Tuesday. It's a book I actually wrote in 2004, before I had sold anything. It's set in a Philadelphia museum where I worked for several years. I circulated it to agents, and one agent came back with some excellent suggestions for making it better–like including a murder. Oh. Right. So I rewrote it with the murder of a character who was already in the book. I resubmitted it to that agent, but ultimately she passed on it. However, I never throw anything away, and a couple of months ago I pitched it to Berkley and they bought the book, in a three-book deal.

This should be easy, I thought. After all, I had the first book written, and I'm just overflowing with ideas for sequels. There's only one problem: Book 1 (still unnamed) was too long. The contract specified 70,000 to 80,000 words. Book 1 was 102,000.

Sarah and I had no problems with the Glassblowing Series–the books there all came in nicely at around 78,000 words. The Orchard Series? Well, I'll admit I fudged a little, and they're all over 80,000, but not by a lot. But 102,000? Not happening. Which meant I had to do some serious editing.

I write long. When I first started writing, I had no clue how long a book was supposed to be. I just sat down and wrote. I remember pulling a mystery book at random from my bookshelf and literally counting the words on the page and the number of pages. That was long before I knew about writers groups and on-line loops, and I'm not sure I even knew that my word processing program had a "word count" function. I simply told the story until it ended. Luckily that turned out to be book length. Looking back, I find that the shortest thing I've ever written was my second book, a sweet romance set in Ireland, at 66,000 words. All the others topped 80,000 words–and, once I got rolling, they started creeping past 90,000, and then 100,000.

But there are conventions in the book business: cozies short, and thrillers and suspense are longer. I write cozies, ergo my books should be kind of short. There are probably lots of good reasons why this is true: some relate to physical production of the books, others to reader expectations. Publishers don't always share these tidbits with writers, but they do expect us to conform.

So Philadelphia Book 1 had to go on a starvation diet. Let me say I prefer whittling to padding. I think. I'd rather have something on the page to pare away than try to shoehorn a new subplot or some enriching description into existing text (and you know, either way, you're going to introduce some bloopers which will come back to embarrass you).

But cutting is still painful. A writer puts the words on the page for a reason. You're building characters; you're making a place come alive with sensory details; you're planting subtle clues. You love each and every word, because they're all yours and you strung them together. But at the same time, you can hear your editor's voice (Note: I love my editor–she knows what she's doing, and she invariably makes my books better) saying, "what is the point of this section?" "Why do we need this?" And worse, "you've said this before–can't you take one or the other out?"

The immature part of you says, "no, I don't wanna. I like those words/paragraph/subplot." You can dress it up and tell the editor things like, "I was expounding on the protagonist's issues with forming close relationships with other people based on her dysfunctional relationship with her father."

And the editor's appropriate response to all your blustering should be, "but does it advance the story?"' And often the answer is "no."

So I had to cut a whole lot of words out of my story. It hurts, no question. The first part to go was the "romance" aspect–the potential relationship with the law enforcement official (okay, it's cliche, but...). Take out all the drooling over his broad shoulders, all the enigmatic glances (does he? should I?). Take out a few juicy scenes, or tone them down. Still too long.

Then there were the chunks I label "look at how much I know!" This series is about museums, and I've worked in several. Unfortunately I have a tendency to show off my arcane knowledge. Some of this insider information might interest people who really want to know what goes on behind the scenes, so some of it stays. But not all of it. Stop showing off, Sheila. Slash, chop.

And then there are the lovely chunks of "thinking." My protagonists actually stop and think about what's going on, most often about how they're supposed to solve the murder. Thinking is good–now and then. But thinking falls under the dreaded "show, don't tell" umbrella, and it's kind of cheating, when you periodically review the evidence for the readers. Out comes the red pen again, axing entire paragraphs of thinking.

This doesn't mean that I don't ever get to add anything. Even in the best of times, I will stumble over a sentence I wrote and say, "what the heck did I mean by that?" And I also have a tendency to assume I've said something, but when I look for it it's not there. Maybe whatever I was trying to say was obvious to me, immersed in the book, but it's not going to be clear to a new reader.

So that's what I've been doing for weeks now–taking a machete to my deathless prose. Pretty words? Bah! Throw them overboard. Longing glances? Not in my mystery! As of yesterday, my bloated 102,000-word book was down to a lean 90,000 words and change, and I've got one more pass to make before I push the button and send it off to my editor. That's 12% of the book that has fallen to my sword, er, pen. Is it a better book now? I think so. It's clearer, cleaner, and it comes closer to telling the story I wanted before I buried it in words. I think it's working–and I hope my editor agrees.

Look for Untitled First Book in the Unnamed Philadelphia Museum series in Fall 2010!

November 23, 2009

Posted by Sheila Connolly and Sarah Atwell, who are equally ticked off

There was a great disturbance in the Force this week: Romance Writers of America took up arms against the publisher Harlequin. The story is both simple and complex.

To give some context, some numbers first. Romance Writers (aka RWA) is a writers organization with over ten thousand members, whose "mission and purpose is to advocate for the professional interests of career-focused romance writers," according to their website. In the industry, they are a force to be reckoned with. I am a member, and have been for six years. I started out trying to write romantic suspense and found that I simply don't have a romance voice, but I've stayed with RWA because they provide a terrific support structure and a lot of valuable information for writers.

Among the advantages of membership is access to their annual market review. For 2008, RWA reports that romance fiction generated $1.37 billion in sales, and they estimate that this level will hold steady in 2009. Compare this to mystery sales for 2008, at $668 million according to RWA's figures.

Harlequin Enterprises has been distributing books in North America since 1957, and while I can't cite statistics, I think it's safe to say that they dominate the romance market. While you may not always see their imprints on bookstore shelves, they do mail order as well, and they have throngs of hungry readers who may read as many as 30 of their romance novels each month. Harlequin is one of the few companies which actually reported increased sales for last year, in the face of economic turmoil (escapism sells!).

So what has pitted RWA against Harlequin this past week? Harlequin announced a new venture: Harlequin Horizons, a vanity/subsidy press. And RWA ejected them from the kingdom, because RWA has clearly-stated guidelines about what kinds of publishing they endorse, and this does not include vanity presses. Harlequin ignored those guidelines in creating their new venture. RWA acknowledges the right to publish through a vanity press, but their stand against Harlequin represents an effort to protect member-writers from exploitation.

Why does this matter? Harlequin will no doubt continue to thrive, with or without its new vanity press. But RWA will not let them continue to participate in the annual national conference, which offers free meeting space, the chance to hold editor appointments and offer spotlights for their program only to eligible publishers. Harlequin can attend the conference–if they pay. But they cannot use RWA resources to publicize or promote the company or its imprints, and this includes Romance Writers Report, which goes to all RWA members.

Pity the poor RWA members who are published by Harlequin, and there are quite a few. They won't be drummed out of RWA, but they won't be eligible for RWA-sponsored contests, of which the biggest is the RITA, awarded at the national conference. Romance writers seem to love contests, and the RITA is the jewel in the crown; Harlequin books will not be allowed. Ouch.

Members have been vocal on various loops, and the majority support RWA's stance. The guidelines are there for all to see, and have been for years. Apparently Harlequin did not consult with RWA when they planned their new venture, even as a courtesy, and they feigned dismay at RWA's quick response. [MWA and SFFWA have joined with RWA to condemn Harlequin's actions; Sisters in Crime has made a slightly more cautious public statement.]

So what is the stink really about? Who's got more power, more clout in the industry? Not exactly. Harlequin has every right to create a new imprint, and that is a business decision. What is offensive is the way they went about it. The scenario boils down to this: you, Eager Writer, submit a manuscript to Harlequin. You receive a rejection letter–which includes the suggestion that you contact Harlequin Horizons (note: Harlequin backtracked almost immediately, saying that they would remove "Harlequin" from the title–maybe because it was quickly labeled "HarlHo" by loop members–but it's a bit late, since everybody knows now that they're behind it). This new imprint will be happy to accept your money–up to $1,500–and produce your book. Oh, and they'll be happy to take 50% of the proceeds–after you have promoted it yourself. And if you're really, really lucky, and the book does well, maybe a Harlequin editor will look at it and consider publishing it. But, oops, Harlequin isn't going to ensure that your self-published book will appear on shelves alongside their own.

This is just wrong, and violates the ethical standards of almost any writers organization. Eager Writer is clueless about the industry, and will do almost anything to see her name on a book cover, particularly one with Harlequin stamped somewhere on it. Harlequin is exploiting that, and pocketing a nice piece of change while they do it, dangling the hope that somehow the Harlequin name will guarantee success.

Could this mess be laid at the feet of the new CEO of Harlequin's parent company, Canada-based Torstar–who is a number-cruncher? Does he see Harlequin as a cash cow, and that slush pile Harlequin sits on as a potential goldmine that will help him bolster the sagging Torstar?

It's an ugly scene all around. The consensus among members is that RWA has done the right thing, but at a price. Harlequin's image in the eyes of its writers had fallen, but the general public probably won't notice. Who wins?

But I salute RWA for sticking to its guns, and for its sister organizations for following RWA's lead. We as writers need powerful advocates who will stick up for writers and protect their interests, and I for one am glad that RWA has taken this stand. I hope it makes a difference.

November 16, 2009

Since the Thanksgiving holiday is upon us, we thought we'd take a look at different aspects of the holiday and what it means to us. Since I'm first in the queue, I'll talk about the first Thanksgiving.

I live about fifteen miles from Plymouth, Massachusetts, site of the first permanent settlement in the colony that would become the United States. Okay, I know that the Roanoke Colony came earlier, but they couldn't hang on (thus generating one of the first mysteries on our soil). There were also plenty of trappers and traders who roamed the lands and rivers (spreading germs to the Indians), but they didn't stick around.

Which leaves those hardy Pilgrims of Plymouth. We probably all got hit over the head with the Mayflower story in elementary school (at least if you lived on the East Coast as I did). The romance of Priscilla Alden and Miles Standish. The happy natives sharing their lore and their corn and fish to help the settlers survive the first winter, for which they were woefully unprepared. They should have known better than to land in November, but that wasn't altogether their fault–the boat ran late.

Anyway, recently I've had a chance to get to know modern Plymouth. It's an interesting place. I first saw it decades ago, although I didn't do a lot of sightseeing–more like, yup, there's that rock. We moved to southeastern Massachusetts six years ago, and when I first revisited Plymouth, I thought it was kind of a stodgy, seedy little town. The rock was still there. I did visit Plimoth Plantation, which is perhaps the best living history museum in the country, and worth the trip if you have any interest in history.

Over the past few years Plymouth has kind of reinvented itself. The main street downtown is dotted with interesting restaurants and shops of all sorts. A couple of upscale malls have sprung up on the outskirts. My doctor has an office in The Pinehills, a huge residential development that's like a little city unto itself, with a market, a bank, and a variety of shops, all in sparkly-bright and very clean new buildings, and not one but two golf courses. A derelict rope-making center on one end of town has morphed into an interesting industrial and office park now called Cordage Park.

But that's the modern city, and I was talking about history. I've may have mentioned before that I'm a genealogist (no! really?), and, yes, I have identified one Mayflower ancestor. Poor guy, he died less than a month after the Mayflower landed, and he may never have set foot on the ground (his wife came over on another ship three years later, with their two daughters, and I'm descended from one of them). For years I felt like he was kind of a second-class Pilgrim, until I learned that fully half of the original passengers died in that first year. In fact, the settlers were so worried that the Indians would notice that their ranks were dwindling rapidly that they didn't even set up a burial ground for the dead–they buried them by the dark of night in unmarked graves. For the tri-centennial of the landing, the townspeople collected all the bones they'd been unearthing for years and had squirreled away in various places around town and installed them all in a substantial granite sarcophagus, so at least they're together, for perhaps the first time since 1621.

But the settlers survived that first hard year, and more settlers arrived (along with food supplies), and as people kept dying, they did in fact create a cemetery. It's up on the hill above the town, where the first palisade stood. Several years ago I visited that cemetery for the first time, and I was surprised by how much it moved me. Strip away all the buildings and the docks laid out below, and imagine open space along the shore, with a few people moving around, maybe a few cattle or pigs. Behind you stands the pitifully small wooden fort, large enough to contain the handful of citizens and the precious livestock. And behind that? Nobody knew. Imagine the weight of those endless miles of unknown territory, peopled by unpredictable natives, while you and your tiny band clung to the coast and hoped that you'd survive, which was far from guaranteed.

I came away from that place with a heightened respect for those first settlers. Their reasons for coming–financial, political or religious–may have varied, but whatever the reason it took a lot of courage to make that leap into the unknown.

They survived because they were lucky: a couple of plagues in the years before they arrived had wiped out over 90% of the local Indian population, which left already-cleared land for them to occupy and cultivate–and nobody left to resist them. And the settlers didn't exactly cover themselves with glory in their ongoing relationship with what few Indians remained: they robbed the survivors, and even plundered the graves of their dead. It's a wonder the Indians helped them at all.

But they did. The first Thanksgiving took place in the fall of 1621, after a good harvest, with some 90 Wampanoags attending. Here's Edward Winslow's account from A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in 1621:

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, among other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed upon our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

Many of us may be facing hard times these days, but put yourself in the place of those First Settlers in 1621–it may make you feel better.

November 09, 2009

At Boucheron recently I was hanging out with a terrific group of women who all write in the same genre, traditional mysteries. (You know who you are!) In fact, many of us write for the same publisher. All are talented, interesting people. And I realized that most of them are blonde.

When you know people primarily on-line, through their blogs or through writers lists, you don't think much about appearance. We do share a lot of personal information: I could probably tell you which ones are married, which have children, which are still working at day jobs. I could even tell you how many pets they have and what kind(s), or their favorite foods. But until you meet them at a conference, you have no idea what they look like.

Well, this batch was blonde. Guess what: I'm not blonde. I felt like a goose in a swan convention. A "herd" of swans? (Hey, it sounds wrong, but I looked it up.) There are probably pictures to prove it.

Why did I notice this? A few million years ago, when I was an art history major in college, I wrote a senior thesis about Victorian Genre Painting. In case you're unfamiliar with that (believe me, most people are), it was a style of painting that became popular when the middle classes in the later nineteenth century found they had some disposable income and started buying art, mainly as wall decoration. Quite a few of these pictures included the very people who were buying them: the English bourgeoisie. (Gee, kinda like cozies, eh?) The characters depicted were affluent members of the class, often seen in comfortable home environments. At the same time there was a "story-telling" element, and quite often a moral message.

My particular focus in the thesis was how Victorian painters depicted women in that era (I wrote this during the height of the feminist wave). The overall theme was "home=good". Women were represented as the keepers of the hearth, helpmeets, and mothers. And to emphasize this, there was the antithesis of this image: the fallen woman.

The picture that best sums this up was painted by one Arthur D. Lemon, titled "Pure Innocence/Pure in No Sense." It was a dual picture. On one side was a charming child at play; on the other, a prostitute. And both were blonde. (I'd love to show it to you, but it's so obscure that it doesn't appear anywhere on-line.)

Blonde or fair hair is often associated with childhood. In addition, it is (if I recall my college biology classes correctly) also the result of recessive genes, so a "true" blonde is a relatively rare phenomenon, unless you happen to find yourself in Scandinavia. So if a woman chooses to lighten her hair color, she is doing it (a) to invoke in others pleasant associations with early childhood, or (b) to stand out in a crowd (think Marilyn Monroe). According to my in-depth research (i.e., I googled it), commercial hair bleach first emerged in a major way in the 1880s-90s, which corresponds to the period of Lemon's picture. I would guess his lady of the evening wanted to be noticed.

Of course, hair color today runs the gamut from natural shades to neon, so a blonde hue is pretty mainstream. And then there's the age factor: many of us are "of a certain age," as the French would say. (TheFreeDictionary tells me that means a woman who "is no longer young but is not yet old." Unfortunately, with ageing comes grey hair. We live in a youth-oriented culture, and nobody wants to be branded as "old," even if they're only forty.

Take a poll among any group of women: how many are sporting their own natural hair color? Not many, I'd bet. I plead guilty, and my grandmother went to her grave at 94 with dyed hair. My mother dyed her hair; my sister dyes hers. I resisted for as long as I could and finally gave in when I felt like I was fading into the wallpaper.

But I didn't go blonde, because it would look entirely fake on me. Instead I opted for a tribute to my Irish forbears and chose a warm brown with reddish highlights (let's ignore the fact that the only Irish family members I knew had dark or sandy hair–not a redhead in the batch). At least I don't look blah and washed-out.

So to come back to my original question: why are so many cozy writers blonde? We want to look younger than our chronological age? I don't think that applies. For one thing, many of us think that we're better writers now than we would have been twenty years ago, so we don't need to go back. Besides, our readers don't look at author photos when they buy our books. Is it because we want to stand out from the crowd? I'm happier with that idea. Maybe the blondes are saying, look at me! I'm smart, I'm articulate, and I like what I'm doing. It's a great group to hang out with–even if you're not blonde.

November 02, 2009

I'm having a tooth pulled today. No, I won't share with you with the gory details–in fact, I expect to do my best to forget them ASAP. But this is just the latest adventure in my troubled relationship with my teeth.

I have lousy teeth–soft, fragile, and far from pearly white. In part this is hereditary, because both of my parents had rather yellow teeth, so I guess I was doomed from the start. I'm afraid to consider bleaching, either professional or the handy home version, because that would probably just further weaken whatever feeble enamel I've got. Or I'd manage to turn the teeth into an approximation of military camouflage pattern. I'll settle for dingy.

I really thought I could hang on to all my teeth. My mother did, and so did her mother, to the age of 94. My grandmother grew up in the early years of the 20th century, in a family that wasn't affluent, so I can't say what kind of dental care she received early in her life. Maybe she just had good tooth genes, but whatever the circumstances, her teeth stayed with her. Clearly she didn't share her genes with me.

In appearance I inherited my father's teeth, including the gap between the front two, which miraculously closed without benefit of orthodontia when my wisdom teeth came in, all at once, in my senior year in college. Yes, I still have all four wisdom teeth in place–with a few fillings.

My mother always made sure I had good dental care. I still remember my first dentist: Doctor Manuel Album, Jenkintown, PA. He had won awards for pediatric dentistry, and I started going to him when I was five. I was not his favorite patient: I didn't mind the drilling so much, but I was consistently terrified when surrounded by adults looming over me with large hypodermic needles. And they never let me prepare myself–I guess they thought moving in fast was better. I disagreed. And I got through the drilling part by thinking, what would [favorite cowboy of the moment] do? Cowboys are brave and stoic–"It's just a scratch"–which is a handy role model when you're sitting in a dentist's chair. (Note: the saving virtue of Dr. Album's office was that it was right around the corner from the Peter Pan Diner, to which my mother and I would adjourn after my appointment for an ice-cream soda.)

Obviously the pattern was set early. I have teeth that are woefully susceptible to cavities. I always brushed them regularly, and I had fluoride applications back when that was exceptional. I had regular check-ups. None of it mattered. My teeth kept betraying me.

Memorable occasions of my life have been marked by tooth failures. The day of my first date with my husband, I was eating an egg for breakfast and wham, a molar fell apart. I went on the date anyway (stoic, remember?), and the rest is history. On my way to my first writers conference, a filling came loose, and finally gave up the ghost while I was eating a piece of chocolate cake. In Australia we were visiting a distant relative in Sydney; I bit into a piece of cheese, and another tooth crumbled. Do you see a pattern here? So help me, I don't crunch ice or open bottles with my teeth. I don't chew gum or even think about eating caramels. All of these incidents have taken place while I was chewing on something soft. I think my teeth hate me.

To be fair, I've known that the soon-to-be late lamented tooth was gearing up for a showdown for quite a while. First the twinges, then the pressure sensitivity. My dentist filed down a few things and said, maybe that will work. It did, for a while. then the twinges came back. He took x-rays: no abscess, nothing visible. Just another tooth giving up on me. Given my track record, I fully expected it to explode at Bouchercon, but it kindly held off until I got back. At which time I decided I was tired of both the constant dull ache and the worry about exactly when it would betray me, and went to an endodontist. He was very nice, and had lots of really cool high-tech instruments, but the bottom line is, the tooth is beyond salvage. Cracked through and through. Time to say goodbye.

I feel like I've failed, even though I've done everything right. But into every life some rain must fall, and apparently it's raining on my poor tooth. At least my daughter grew up as part of the fluoride generation, and will never share my dental horror stories. Lucky girl.

Ave atque vale, Tooth #15. You will be missed. (But at least I hope I won't end up looking like the lovely lady below!)

October 26, 2009

I think I left my brain in Indiana. Bouchercon in Indianapolis was wonderful, as no doubt every blogger in the blogosphere has told you, and I won't repeat it here. The best part was the chance to meet and talk with so many people I know only on-line, or at most see once or twice a year. It's nice to know that the writers' community is made up of real people–and they're great!

Since I was headed west, I took a detour of a few days to visit my sister, who lives in western Kentucky. Although she's my only sibling, and we're from a family made up of only children and orphans, I don't see much of her. Time was she used to come visit me, in Pennsylvania and in Massachusetts, but since the birth of her first grandchild three years ago, she's been a part-time caregiver for him, which limits her mobility. Since I had never met the young man, and since I hadn't visited her since her son's wedding in 2003, I thought it was my turn to make the trek.

I flew to Indianapolis and rented a car, and took off southward. First revelation: there's a lot of corn in Indiana. My sister had given me directions by way of a state highway, rather than the big roads, which proved a very pleasant choice (especially for driving in an unfamiliar area–did I mention I am directionally challenged?–in an unfamiliar car). It took me through small towns and...cornfields. Alternating with soybean fields.

Now, a year or two ago I wouldn't have paid much attention to this, other than noting that the corkstalks were brown and bare. But since I've been writing about food and organic crops recently, and since I've seen the movie Food, Inc., and since like so many people in this country are creeping up on Type 2 diabetes, I've found my attitude toward corn has changed. I won't preach (much: read the labels on the processed foods in your supermarket and see how often they include corn syrup, usually high on the list), but I this time I was much more aware of the names of the seed vendors posted by each and every field. There were a lot of them. It's a big business in this country.

And don't get me started on soybeans. Their cultivation nationally can be more or less summed up in one word: Monsanto.

So I spent 176 miles each way amusing myself with internal rants about food production in this country. But the other noteworthy thing I noticed was how empty the roads were. I have lived on the East Coast much of my life, with a ten-year detour to California, and those roads are crowded! There are people everywhere, and most New England roads are based on Indian trails and cattle paths, and usually take you through the middle of a quaint old town where there's a five-way intersection with little signage. Lots of fun.

Indiana was peaceful, as was the bit of Kentucky I drove through. Although the roads were usually two-lane, there were few impatient people riding my back bumper (good thing, because there were few areas where one could pass). Even the truckers were polite. Everyone followed the speed limits (gasp!), and the changes were clearly posted as you approached then left the towns scattered along the route. The towns themselves were usually small, with a lot of Victorian buildings, although there was no shortage of strip malls. But compared to some parts of the East Coast where the strips malls are continuous and the town centers non-existent, Indiana was positively rural. All in all it was a very pleasant drive, and I didn't even get lost. [Note: I asked Mapquest how to get where I was going, and it gave me two pages of detailed instructions. But it could have been boiled down to a few lines, and all the middle ones could have been compressed into "Follow Rt. 231 wherever it goes."]

In Kentucky I did have a chance to spend some quality time with my great-nephew Carter. God, that makes me feel old! I remember when I was about Carter's age, meeting my youngest great-aunt (on my father's side), who seemed impossibly old to me. Doing the math now, I find she was only in her seventies then. (I'm not!) Anyway, Carter is a charming, articulate, intelligent, capable young man, I'm pleased to say (BTW, my sister reads this blog). He is skilled at both crafts and sports (great hand-eye coordination for his age) and we had fun.

We spent part of our time together watching daytime children's television. Obviously, since my daughter is now 24, I haven't paid much attention to this lately, so it was interesting to see how programs have changed. I'm happy to report that there is much more educational content these days (e.g., Little Einsteins), and Carter followed raptly and could sing along.

Back in my day (in the Dark Ages, when we had only a very few black-and-white channels), we were stuck with a few cartoons, Romper Room, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a handful of Westerns (mostly with singing cowboys), and the so-called funny men like the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy. I discovered early that I hated the funny men–they were mean and dumb. I liked Westerns, and I enjoyed Mr. Wizard (ah, the budding forensic scientist in me).

But now I find I have mixed feelings about contemporary children's shows. They provide stimulation and some education, but they're still electronic. Children need to interact with people, including their peer group (note: Carter does attend group day-care a couple of days a week). They need to socialize, and the characters on screen, no matter how smart or cute, aren't real.

When I was a few years older, my friends and I used to engage in acting out our favorite shows during recess. In a way it was the best of both worlds: we watched our shows (the ones with people, not cartoons), but then we shared them second-hand with each other, and we all took roles and went beyond the scripts. I sincerely hope that this generation of children doesn't lose the capacity for creative, interactive play.

Anyway, then I went to Bouchercon and played with my friends. It was a great ten days, overall, and I'm still shoveling out the accumulated stuff on my desk and the backlog of emails. I only wish I could find my brain.